


The Marriage We Did Not Honour

by Caenea



Series: The Winterfell Reunions [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Feels, Reunions, language warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 11:59:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11966922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caenea/pseuds/Caenea
Summary: Tyrion Lannister returns to Winterfell and finds that his porcelain wife has become a steel lady. What will the two of them have to say to each other, with Littlefinger’s blood still wet on the stones of the Hall?





	The Marriage We Did Not Honour

**Author's Note:**

> So it’s going to be two years until Season 8 and God knows I’m not waiting that long. Third person, some language. No mention of Icy McIcerson and his band of merry rotting corpses. Story follows the same timeline as the Winterfell Reunions but is set post-episode 7.
> 
> Feel free to share the story if you like, just give due credit etc. I make no profit from this. If you have a request for reunions you might like to see, do let me know.

 

_She’s much smarter than she lets on._

_She’s starting to let on._

_Good._

_The disgraced daughter and the demon monkey. We’re perfect for each other._

_She is no longer yours to torment._

_My lady, I am your husband. Let me help you._

_I promise you one thing, my lady. I won’t ever hurt you._

_Lady Stark, you may survive us yet._

_I won’t share your bed. Not until you want me to._

_And if I never want you to?_

_And so my watch begins._

_I miss my wife. The wife I hardly knew._

_I want her. I want Winterfell, yes, but I want her as well._

Round and round his head the words went, faster than the snowflakes that up here had been falling for months. All the things he said and thought of his wife, the porcelain girl with the hair of fire. The wife he married in name only, as there was no bedding and no consummation mark for them to see on her sheets.

 

He’d heard she’d been married again, to Ramsey Snow or Bolton or whatever name he took by the end. He’d heard terrible things about that marriage. Jon Snow’s eyes darkened when it was mentioned. His hand was wont to tighten around Longclaw and Davos would reach out to check him.

 

By all accounts, she was no longer a porcelain doll. By all accounts, she was a queen of steel, the woman who had guaranteed a win at the Battle of the Bastards. It was she, Jon said, that brought the Knights of the Vale in time to break the Bolton lines and rescue Jon from the bloodbath. And it was she, apparently, who had fed her husband to his own dogs. At least, that was the rumour.

 

The walls of Winterfell rose black against the white snow. When he had seen it last it had looked like a small, mud-stained holdfast, but against the snow it looked like a fortress. The gates were standing open, the wind moaning around turret and rampart, lights gleaming through the windows against the rapidly-falling darkness.

 

Despite his attempts to ride with the Queen and Jon Snow, Tyrion had been sent ahead with the Hound and Gendry, to announce the arrival. He wished he had not, would have greatly preferred to march in with a crowd, to observe instead of being observed.

                “You look like you’re on your way to your execution.” It was Gendry who spoke, urging his horse forward to ride beside Tyrion, his own eyes fixed on the castle walls.

                “I might very well be,” he responded dryly, trying to inject humour into the situation. “My wife is in that castle.”

                “Your wife?”

                “The Lady Sansa. And what do you have to look so cheerful for?”

                “Arya Stark.” The Hound gives a snort at that.

                “That little hellcat?”

                “My hellcat,” Gendry corrects.

                “I don’t give a fuck about hellcats and wives,” the Hound grunts. “But there’ll be a good fire, ale and food in that place.” He urges his horse to a gallop and they have no choice but to spur onwards.

 

The courtyard at Winterfell is almost empty, but for a girl in boy’s clothes with a sword at one hip, and a Valyrian steel dagger at the other.      

                “Welcome to Winterfell, Lord Tyrion,” she says coolly. “I’m Arya Stark.” She’s so small. How old can she be, the Stark child who Tyrion remembers only vaguely? He dismounts and bows.

                “Lady Arya –“

                “I’m not a lady. I’m just Arya.” Gendry chokes on a laugh behind him and Arya smirks.

                “My apologies,” he says. “We are here as –“

                “The vanguard of the Dragon Queen and the King in the North. Yes. My sister will receive you in the Great Hall, but be careful – they’re still scrubbing blood off the floor.” She gives nobody the chance to respond to that, simply walking away. The Hound spits onto the frozen snow.

                “Someone got in her way,” he says, almost smiling. “Come on. Sooner we get the pleasantries done, sooner I drink.”

 

The guards swing open the doors to the Hall and Tyrion advances as the pointman. At first, the fire blazing in the hearth behind the High Table blinds him, stops him seeing too much, but then a tongue of flame seems to detach itself from the fire, rising higher to touch the mantel and beyond, covering the direwolf too. But then the figure resolves itself, and it is not a tongue of flame, instead it’s her, Sansa Stark, Warden of the North in Jon’s absence, Lady of Winterfell, once Sansa Lannister, once Sansa Bolton and now Lady Stark. She is still beautiful but the once soft beauty of her youth has become the sharp angles of a warrior. Beside her is a boy in a wheeled chair and on her other side, stood before the table, is Arya, grinning wolfishly at Gendry. And before them, between his feet and the high table, is a bloodstain. Enough blood to have killed a man, to have drained a man dry. Tyrion stops before the bloodstain, trying not to smell the hot copper tang that indicates that if he touched it, it would still be sticky.

                “Lady Stark,” he says again.

                “Lord Tyrion,” she answers, and he jerks upright. That is not the pretty air her voice once was. This holds something of a battle cry. She carries no weapon, she is not her deadly sister. But she is lethal without blades, lethal without a battleaxe. This woman has endured horrors. She raises her hand in some kind of signal, but then motions to him to continue.

                “I am here as an envoy. I am Hand to Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Realm, Lady Regnant of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons.”

                “That is quite a list, Lord Tyrion,” Sansa replies, her voice cool. He wishes she would stop calling him Lord Tyrion. He wishes she wouldn’t call him anything else. “So the Dragon Queen is on her way.”

                “About an hour behind us, my Lady.”

                “And my brother, the King in the North?”

                “At her side, my Lady.” A serving boy brings out a flagon of ale which Arya intercepts, while a maid places a flagon of wine before Sansa. Arya pours a mug of ale and passes it to the Hound, before pouring herself one and drinking deep. Sansa does not touch the wine. Good Gods, but Tyrion would kill a man for a drink just now.

                “I am having their chambers prepared. Her armies will be accommodated as best as we can. You are welcome to Winterfell, Lord Tyrion. I will have a man show you to your own room.”

 

The room he’s been given is small, and from the look of it he thinks it may have been one of the children’s rooms once. But there are no more children. The crippled boy has become a man, the misfit girl has become a warrior and the lovestruck child has become a queen of ice, kissed by fire. This game their elders saw fit to play has stripped them of innocence and laughter, and has left behind three Direwolves, ready to fight for their lives and defend their pack to the death. No wonder Gendry loves the warrior, so refreshingly unconventional and so confident in herself. No wonder the Hound would bend the knee to the little bird if she requested it.

 

He returns to the Hall, to find it empty apart from Sansa. She’s pulled her chair round to the fire, a table before her holding the flagon on wine they brought her and another chair before that. He doesn’t approach her for some time, just stands to watch her.

                “You may come in, Lord Tyrion,” she says, without looking up. “You do not need to hide from me.”

                “Someone ought to have done so,” he says. He takes the chair opposite hers and she gestures to the wine.

                “It’s for you,” she says.

                “I recall. You don’t drink it unless you have to.” To his surprise, she smiles a little at that.

                “Yes. The bloodstain – it was Littlefinger.” He nearly drops his goblet.    

                “Lord Baelish?”

                “Yes. He really ought to have been cleverer. But he was not. He schemed once too often and most unfortunately for him, made the mistake of scheming against Arya.”

                “So he is dead then.”

                “Too late to do any good, but yes, he is dead. He started this war you know, dripping his poisons into ear after ear, manipulating those around him into betrayal and murder and mistrust. Chaos is a ladder, he said once – and he was the one holding it steady. He told Lysa Arryn to murder Jon Arryn. He told the assassin to use your dagger to murder my brother Bran. He held the knife to my father’s throat in the Red Keep and told him he should never have trusted him. Without him, none of this would have happened, and perhaps we would all be the happier for it.” She looks at him then, her face made fierce by the flickering light of the fire. “How are you, Tyrion? How did my husband go from facing death at the hands of his own sister and father to Hand of the Dragon Queen?” No title, no mention of his name or his blood, only Tyrion, and acknowledgement of their marriage. Something cold seems to warm inside him.

                “With the help of a great deal of wine, and good friends. You will meet some of them, when they get here. My brother helped me escape the dungeons, and I took ship across the Narrow Sea with Varys.”

                “Varys?”

                “An unlikely ally, but an ally,” he answers her. She nods.

                “I think I understand about unlikely allies. Theon Greyjoy was mine – have you heard of him?”

                “He was at Dragonstone, with the Queen. He’s alive. His uncle has stolen away his sister, and he has gone to get her back.”

                “The last I had heard of him, he was returning to the Iron Islands. It is good to know that he’s alive at least. He suffered terribly at Ramsey’s hand and – no, it’s too terrible, and besides that it is not my story to tell. Ramsey did terrible things to Theon.”

                “I heard you married him.”

                “Littlefinger sold me to him. He was a brutal man. I’ve no doubt you’ve heard and I don’t care to discuss it. Ramsey met his end.”

                “I heard it was at your hand.”

                “In a manner of speaking.” Tyrion has to smile and she pours herself a glass of wine.

                “I thought you didn’t drink it unless you had to.”

                “The King in the North is coming home with a Southern Queen who he has pledged fealty to, I have Northern Lords making their displeasure known, my sister has become a Faceless Man assassin and my brother is the Three Eyed Raven and has visions. All I ever wanted was a husband who adored me, and babies of my own. Now I have mutiny on my hands and angry men to placate. I think that if ever there was a time when wine would help, this would be that time.” Tyrion raises his glass in silent salute and she rests her head against the back of her chair. “I am weary of war, and weary of politics.”

                “In another life, my Lady, I would have been pleased to have the chance to make you the happy bride you dreamed of being.”

                “You did make me happy,” she answers; an answer so stunning Tyrion finds himself lost for words and breathless. “You were kind to me. More than that, you were kind without having any ulterior motive. I think you might be the only man I have ever known who has not tried to use me to further his own ends or done me harm.”

                “I did all I could to make you happy. It is my regret that we did not meet in better circumstances, and my regret that I was not the handsome warrior you wanted.”

                “None of that is your fault, Tyrion, any more than it is my own.” She reaches out then, and her hand covers his and on her finger, catching the light of the flames that crackle so merrily, is the wedding ring he gave her, heavy gold and ruby-set.

                “You still have it?” His chest feels a little tight, his eyes a little wet and suddenly the fire seems too hot on his skin.

                “I never lost it.”

 

It might mean that she cares, it might mean that she wears it as a reminder of the things that she has suffered. It might mean anything in between those extremes, but Tyrion finds that it is a comfort regardless, and that the frozen place deep inside him is thawed a little as he looks at her.

 

But too soon, the trumpets sound and a guard is knocking to announce that the army has been sighted and she lets go of his hand and slips back into being Lady Stark. Sansa, the little bird and the porcelain queen, has been packed away safely somewhere deep inside her, and Tyrion did not think it would hurt so much to see it.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
